Self-Realization as the Moral Ideal

STOP

Early Journal Content on JSTOR, Free to Anyone in the World

This article is one of nearly 500,000 scholarly works digitized and made freely available to everyone in
the world by JSTOR.

Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other
writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the
mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries.

We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this
resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non-commercial
purposes.

Read more about Early Journal Content at http://about.jstor.org/participate-jstor/individuals/early-
journal-content .

JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people
discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching
platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit
organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact support@jstor.org.

SELF-REALIZATION AS THE MORAL IDEAL.

IF one turn to any of the important ethical discussions
of hardly a generation ago, he finds the center of in-
terest in the origin of moral judgments. It was assumed,
as matter of course, that ethical theory always has been and
always will be divided between two schools — the empiricists
and the intuitionalists, and that this division exhausts the
whole realm. It was assumed that the opposition between
utilitarianism and intuitionalism is essentially this question
of the origin of our knowledge of moral distinctions. Indeed,
I do not know a discussion of that period which even suggests
the fact so obvious to us, that the division of ethical theories
into these two kinds is a cross-division, one relating to the
ethical criterion, the other to the method of arriving at
knowledge of it. Three main influences were at work, how-
ever, in shifting the center of attention to the question of the
nature of the moral end itself. Utilitarianism tended to call
attention to the character of the end involved in action ; the
appearance of intuitive utilitarian systems, like that of Sidg-
wick, showed the insufficiency of the old disjunction; finally
the introduction, from Germany, of a mode of ethical thinking
which was neither utilitarian nor intuitive, yet agreeing with
the former in holding that the morality of all acts is measured
by their efficiency in establishing a certain end, and falling
in with the latter in holding that moral ideas are not the result
of mere association, but of something in the facts themselves,
brought in new problems and new controversies.

In the newer contentions regarding the moral end, the idea
of ' self-realization ' insists upon its claims. The idea seems to
me an important one, bringing out two necessary phases of
the ethical ideal: namely, that it cannot lie in subordination
of self to any law outside itself ; and that, starting with the
self, the end is to be sought in the active, or volitional, side

SELF-REALIZATION AS THE MORAL IDEAL. 653

rather than in the passive, or feeling, side. Yet with those who
use the phrase, there is often a tendency, it seems to me, to
rest in it as a finality, instead of taking it as a statement of a
problem. As warning off from certain defective conceptions,
in pointing to an outline of a solution, it is highly serviceable ;
whether it has any more positive and concrete value depends
upon whether the ideas of self and of realization are worked
out, or are left as self-explaining assumptions.

As a part of the attempt to give the conception of 'self-
realization' a somewhat more precise content, I propose in this
paper to criticize one idea of the self more or less explicit in
much of current discussion. I thus hope to bring out, by way
of contrast, what appears to me the important factor of the
conception of self as the ethical ideal. The notion which I
wish to criticize is that of the self as a presupposed fixed
schema or outline, while realization consists in the filling
up of this schema. The notion which I would suggest as
substitute is that of the self as always a concrete specific
activity; and, therefore, (to anticipate) of the identity of self
and realization. It is extremely difficult to find an explicit
statement of the doctrine of the presupposed or schematic self,
and of realization as the filling up of this outline, and I am,
accordingly, to some extent, under the difficulty of having
to build up the notion criticized through the very process of
criticism. One or two considerations, however, will show that
the notion is not a figment or man of straw. Such a theory as
that of T. H. Green, for example, with its assumption of an
"eternally complete consciousness" constituting the moral
self to be realized by man, illustrates what I mean by a fixed
and presupposed self. Any theory which makes the self
something to be realized, which makes the process of moral
experience a process of gradually attaining this ideal self,
illustrates the same conception. Any theory which does not
make the self always 'there and then,' which does not make
it a reality as specific and concrete as a growing tree or a
moving planet must, in one form or another, set up a rigid
self, and conceive of realization as filling up its empty frame-

654 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. II.

work. In a previous number of The Philosophical Review, 1
I criticized the opposition made by Green between the moral
ideal as self-satisfaction in general and all special satisfactions
of desire. The present paper may be considered a continu-
ation of that, save that now I desire to discuss the question of
realization, rather than the question of the ideal, and to
emphasize the notion of a working or practical self against that
of a fixed or presupposed self.

The idea of realization implies the conception of capacities
or possibilities. Upon the basis of a presupposed complete
self, the possibilities of the present, working or individual self
are the actual content of this presupposed self. 2 I do not
propose to go into the strictly metaphysical difficulties of
this conception. The difficulty, however, bound up with the
question why a completely realized self should think it worth
while to duplicate itself in an unrealized, or relatively empty,
self, how it could possibly do this even if it were thought
worth while, and why, after the complete self had produced
the incomplete self, it should do so under conditions rendering
impossible (seemingly eternally so) any adequate approach of
the incomplete self to its own completeness — this difficulty,
I say, should make us wary of the conception, provided we
can find any working theory concerning unrealized powers
(capacities) which will avoid the difficulty.

We may accept as a practical fact that we do, at a given
time, have unrealized powers, or capacities, and that the reali-
zation of these powers constitutes, at the time, our moral goal.
The question is as to the interpretation of this 'fact.' As the
first objection to the interpretation which makes the capacities
simply the blank form corresponding to a presupposed perfect

1 Vol. I, No. 6, Green's Theory of the Moral Motive.

2 E.g., "The one divine mind gradually reproduces itself in the human soul.
In virtue of this principle in him man has definite capacities, the realization of
which, since in it alone he can satisfy himself, forms his true good. They are not
realized, however, in any life that can be observed . . . and for this reason we
cannot say with any adequacy what the capabilities are." Green, Prolegomena,
p. 189. Here we have it definitely implied, the capacities of man are simply the
already realized content of the presupposed self. On p. 181 it is even more
explicitly stated.

No. 6.] SELF-REALIZATION AS THE MORAL IDEAL. 655

self, let me point out that the only capacities which demand
realization, thus forming our ideal, are specific capacities ;
that, if there is any such thing as capacity in general, it never
presents itself to our consciousness, much less imposes an end
of action upon us. The capacities of a child, for example, are
not simply of a child, not of a man, but of this child, not of
any other. So far as they have to do with the ideal to be
realized, it is the precise capabilities existing at that exact
moment, capabilities as individualized as that place in space
and that portion of time which are concerned. Make the
capacities 'infinite,' or the content of some presupposed self,
instead of actually then and there, actually knowable, and
they furnish no end to be executed. And if it be objected
that the child should be trained to act with reference to some
'infinite' capacity, some unlimited and immeasurable power
which will keep appearing as he grows older, and that failure
to take that into account from the first, means a stunted
development for the child, the objection will serve to emphasize
the point. If this capacity is anything which may be taken
into account, then it is a part of the actual definite situation;
it is not infinite in the sense of indefinite, although it may be
' infinite ' in value — which means, I suppose, that it is the
only thing worth specially considering at the time. Suppose,
for example, the self which the child is to realize involves
some artistic capacity. Let it be said that this end transcends
the child's consciousness, and therefore is not an actually
present capacity. None the less, the realization of this artistic
self can be made the end only if it is present in some one's
consciousness. The objection means simply that the situation
which the parent or the educator sees, the reality upon which
he has his eye, is larger than the one which the child sees.
It is not a case of contrast between an actuality which
is definite, and a presupposed but unknown capacity, but
between a smaller and a larger view of the actuality. If the
child's real end is different from that which would immediately
suggest itself to him, it is not because some capacity tran-
scending his specific self (belonging to some presupposed ideal

656 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. II.

self) has been set up for him, but because the child is not
adequately aware of his specific self. Furthermore, the wider
range of the educator's knowledge would be useless merely
as wider. The mere fact that he saw further ahead, that he
foresaw a later development would not avail in determining the
self to be realized unless the educator were capable of translat-
ing this development back into the present activities of the
child. In other words, in no sense does the artistic capacity of
the child, in general, fix his end ; his end is fixed by the fact that
even now he has a certain quickness, vividness, and plasticity
of vision, a certain deftness of hand, and a certain motor
coordination by which his hand is stimulated to work in
harmony with his eye. It is such considerations as these,
having absolutely nothing to do with mere or with general
possibilities, but concerned with existing activities, which de-
termine the end of conduct in the case referred to. Capacity,
in any sense in which it requires to be realized for the sake
of morality, is not only relative to specific action, but is itself
action.

If capacity is itself definite activity and not simply possi-
bility of activity, the question arises why we conceive of it
as capability, not as complete in itself. If, for example, the
artistic capacity of the child is already activity of the eye,
hand, and brain, and if the realization of this capacity refer
not to some remote attainment, but to the immediate activity
of the time, why do we think of it as capacity at all ?

In answer, we may note that our first conception of our
activity is highly vague and indeterminate. We are conscious
of the activity of our eye and ear in general, but not of just
the way in which they work. We are apt, almost certain,
however, to identify this partial and abstract conception of
their activity with the real activity* Then, when the more
specific factors of the activity force themselves into conscious-
ness, these lie outside of the previous idea of the activity,
and (the activity having been identified with our consciousness
of it) seem, therefore, to be external or indifferent to the
activity itself.

No. 6.] SELF-REALIZATION AS THE MORAL IDEAL. 657

One of the many of Professor James's important contributions
to psychology is his demonstration of the fact that " the only
meaning of essence is teleological, and that classification and
conception are purely teleological weapons of the mind." 1 He
goes on to state that the essence is that which is so important
for my interests that, comparatively, other properties may be
omitted. Now, in our recognition of our own activity, we
are, of course, first conscious (consciousness, as explicit, and
immediate interest being one and the same) of that phase of
our activity which most interests us. When other parts of
the activity force themselves upon consciousness, they seem,
to some extent, to be accidental, because lying outside of
that which we have conceived as the activity. We thus
come to divide our activity into parts — one the factor which
permanently interests us, the other that in which our interest
varies from time to time. The factor of enduring interest
comes to be thought of as a sort of fixed permanent core,
which is the reality, but which may, from time to time, go
through more or less external changes, or which may assume
new, but more or less transitory operations — these further
changes and operations corresponding, of course, to those phases
of the activity in which our interest is shifting. In the act
of vision, for example, the thing that seems nearest us, that
which claims continuously our attention, is the eye itself. We
thus come to abstract the eye from all special acts of seeing;
we make the eye the essential thing in sight, and conceive
of the circumstances of vision as indeed circumstances ; as
more or less accidental concomitants of the permanent eye.
Of course, there is no such thing as the eye in general ;
in reality, the actual fact is always an act of seeing, and
the ' circumstances ' are just as ' necessary ' and ' essential '
parts of the activity as is the eye itself. Or more truly, there
is no such thing as this 'eye'; there is only the seeing.
Nevertheless, our continuing interest being in the eye, we
cannot surrender our abstraction; we only add to it another
one — that of certain ' conditions of exercise ' as also necessary

1 James, Psychology, Vol. II, p. 335.

658 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. II.

and essential to every act. On this side, too, we carry our
abstraction to the utmost possible ; we say that light, or vibra-
tions of ether, is the essential condition of the act of vision.
The eye now becomes the capacity of seeing ; the vibrations
of ether, conditions required for the exercise of the capacity.
That is to say, instead of frankly recognizing that eye and
vibrations are pure abstractions from the only real thing, the
act of seeing, we try to keep the two in their separateness,
while we restore their unity by thinking of one as capacity,
or possibility to be realized only when the other is present.
Instead of the one organic activity we now have an organ on
one side, and environment on the other.

But we cannot stop here. The eye in general and the
vibrations in general do not, even in their unity, constitute
the act of vision. A multitude of other factors are included.
These vary from time to time. Those which continue to
attract attention least often are dismissed as merely indiffer-
ent ; others appear with sufficient frequency so that some
account of them has to be taken. The original core which
was abstracted and identified with the reality, comes to be
conceived as capacity for reaching these things as ends also,
while they are conceived as conditions that help realize it. 1

With this in mind let us return to our child possessed of an
artistic capacity. I hope the preceding discussion has made it
obvious that the recognition of artistic capacity means that we
are now becoming more aware of what the concrete reality of
the child's activity is. We are not primarily finding out what
he may be, but what he is. But having already identified
his self with what we previously knew of it, we try to recon-
cile our two different conceptions by still keeping our old

1 In my Outlines of Ethics, pp. 97-102, I have developed this same idea by
showing that we may analyze individuality into the two sides of 'capacity' and
'environment' (this, of course, being what I have above termed 'conditions of
action'), and then destroy the separateness seemingly involved in this analysis
by recognizing that either of these, taken in its totality, is the other. In an
article entitled "The Superstition of Necessity" in the Monist, Vol. Ill, No. 3,
I have developed at greater length the idea that necessity and possibility are
simply the two correlative abstractions into which the one reality falls apart
during the process of our conscious apprehension of it.

No. 6.] SELF-REALIZATION AS THE MORAL IDEAL. 659

idea of the child's powers of his eye, hand, etc., but attrib-
uting to them new capacities to be realized under certain
conditions — these conditions, in turn, being simply the new
factors which we have now found involved in the activity,
though external to it so far as our previous knowledge was
concerned. We call any activity capacity, in other words,
whenever we first take it abstractly, or at less than its full
meaning, and then add to it further relations which we after-
wards find involved in it. We first transform our partial
conception into a rigid fact, and then, discovering that there
is more than the bare fact which we have so far taken into
account, we call this broken-off fact capacity for the something
more.

To realize capacity does not mean, therefore, to act so as to
fill up some presupposed ideal self. It means to act at the
height of action, to realize its full meaning. The child realizes
his artistic capacity whenever he acts with the completeness of
his existing powers. To realize capacity means to act con-
cretely, not abstractly ; it is primarily a direction to us with
reference to knowledge, not with reference to performance.
It means : do not act until you have seen the relations, the
content, of your act. It means : let there be for you all the
meaning in the act that there could be for any intelligence
which saw it in its reality and not abstractly. The whole point
is expressed when we say that no possible future activities or
conditions have anything to do with the present action except
as they enable us to take deeper account of the present activity,
to get beyond the mere superficies of the act, to see it in its
totality. Indeed, if required to go here into the logic of the
matter, I think it could be shown that these future acts and
conditions are simply the present act in its mediated content.
But, in any case, to realize capacity means to make the special
act which has to be performed an activity of the entire present
self — so far is it from being one step towards the attainment
of a remote ideal self.

One illustration will serve, possibly, to enforce the point
practically as well as theoretically. We have to a considerable

660 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. II.

extent, given up thinking of this life as merely a preparation
for another life. 1 Very largely, however, we think of some
parts of this life as merely preparatory to other later stages of
it. It is so very largely as to the process of education ; and if I
were asked to name the most needed of all reforms in the spirit
of education, I should say : " Cease conceiving of education as
mere preparation for later life, and make of it the full meaning
of the present life." And to add that only in this case does it
become truly a preparation for after life is not the paradox
it seems. An activity which does not have worth enough
to be carried on for its own sake cannot be very effective
as a preparation for something else. By making the present
activity the expression of the full meaning of the case,
that activity is, indeed, an end in itself, not a mere means to
something beyond itself ; but, in being a totality, it is also the
condition of all future integral action. It forms the habit of
requiring that every act be an outlet of the whole self, and it
provides the instruments of such complete functioning.

To suppose that an infant cannot take a complete and present
interest in learning to babble simple words because this is not
the same as rolling off ponderous polysyllables, or that there
is any way for him to attain the mastery of the complexities of
language save as his attention is completely taken up at the
proper time with his babbling, is equivalent to that conception
of the realization of capacity which makes it a possibility, with
reference to some 'infinite' ideal in general.

1 This separation of 'this' world and the 'other' world serves itself to illustrate
the point. The conception of the other world arose with the dawning conception
of spiritual meanings beyond those as yet realized in life. But life had been
identified with the previous conceptions of it and thus hardened into a rigid fact
which resisted change ; the new meaning could not, therefore, be put into life (or
this world), and so was dislocated into another life. But the value of the spiritual
ideal thus set off was in deepening the insight into the significance of actual life,
until it was read back into this actual existence, transforming its meaning. So far
as we are yet half way between the complete separation and the complete identifi-
cation, we consider this world as preparation, or capacity, for the next. We thus
attempt to retain the separateness of the two activities while at the same time we
recognize the facts which point to their identity. The conception of capacity,
when analyzed, will be found in every case to be just this go-between in our
understanding of an activity.

No. 6.] SELF-REALIZATION AS THE MORAL IDEAL. 66 1

In conceiving of capacity, then, not as mere possibility of an
ideal or infinite self, but as the more adequate comprehension
and treatment of the present activity, we are enabled to
substitute a working conception of the self for a metaphysical
definition of it. We are also, I believe, enabled to get rid of
a difficulty which everyone has felt, in one way or another, in
the self-realization theory. In the ordinary conception of the
presupposed self, that self is already there as a fixed fact, even
though it be as an eternal self. The only reason for performing
any moral act is then for this self. Whatever is done, is done
for this fixed self. I do not believe it possible to state this
theory in a way which does not make action selfish in the bad
sense of selfish. 1 When we condemn an act as bad, because
selfish, we always mean, I think, exactly this : the person in
question acted from interest in his past or fixed self, instead of
holding the self open for instruction ; — instead, that is, of
finding the self in the activity called for by the situation. I do
not see that it is a bit better to act to get goodness for the self,
than it is to get pleasure for the self. The selfishness of saints
who are bound to maintain their own saintliness at all hazards,
is Pharisaism ; and Pharisaism is hardly more lovable, or more
practically valuable, than is voluptuarism. Fiat justitia, ruat
coelum, will serve, if it means : Let the needed thing be done,
though the heavens of my past, or fixed, or presupposed self
fall. The man who interprets the saying to mean: Let me
keep my precious self moral, though the heavens of public
action fall, is as despicable personally as he is dangerous
socially. He has identified himself with his past notions of
himself, and, refusing to allow the fructifying pollen of experi-
ence to touch them, refusing to revise his conception of
himself in the light of the widest situation in which he finds
himself, he begins to disintegrate and becomes a standing
menace to his community or group. It is not action for the
self that is required (thus setting up a fixed self which is

1 Selfish, of course, in one sense, all action is ; but the point here is that if the
self is there in some fixed sense already, and action takes place for this self, then,
logically, action is selfish in that sense of selfish motive for which we condemn
any one.

662 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [Vol. II.

simply going to get something more, wealth, pleasure, morality,
or whatever), but action as the self. To find the self in the
highest and fullest activity possible at the time, and to perform
the act in the consciousness of its complete identification with
self (which means, I take it, with complete interest) is morality,
and is realization.

The method with which Green meets the difficulty (though
he never, as far as I recall, specifically recognizes it) is to split
the presupposed self into two parts, one the self so far as
realized up to date, the other part the ideal and as yet unrealized
self. The realized self then becomes the agent, the ideal self
the goal of action. The realized self acts for the ideal self.
In so acting, its motive is the ideal self, perfection, goodness. 1
We might ask, how, with such a break between the already
realized self and the ideal self, the ideal self can possibly
become an end at all ; we might ask, that is, how this ethical
theory is to be reconciled with Green's psychological theory
that the object of desire is always the self. With this complete
breach of continuity, it is difficult to see how the ' ideal self '
can interest the agent (the realized self) at all. But this might
take us too far from our immediate purpose ; and it is enough
here to repeat, in changed form, the objection just made. If
the particular act is done for the sake of goodness in general,
then, and in so far, it is done immorally. For morality consists
in not degrading any required act into a mere means towards
an end lying outside itself, but in doing it for its own sake, or,
again, in doing it as self. It is, I think, a simple psychological
fact that no act can be completely done save as it absorbs
attention. 2 If, then, while doing the act attention must also be
directed upon some outside ideal of goodness, the act must
suffer, being divided. Not being done for its own sake, or as
self, it is only partially done. 3 In other words, acts are to be

1 See, for example, Prolegomena, pp. 202-205.

2 I cannot refrain from saying that to my own mind this statement is purely
tautological. The attention is not something outside the act, and then directed
upon it, but absorption of attention and fulness of activity are two ways of naming
the same thing.

8 We should, then, reverse Kant's statement, Instead of saying that an act

No. 6.] SELF-REALIZATION AS THE MORAL IDEAL. 663

done as good, not for the sake of goodness; for to call an
act good means that it is the full activity or self.

It will take us back to our starting-point and round out the
argument, if we note the fact that this division of the self into
two separate selves (one the realized self, the other the ideal
self), is again the fallacy of hypostatizing into separate entities
what in reality are simply two stages of insight upon our own
part. This 'realized self ' is no reality by itself; it is simply our
partial conception of the self erected into an entity. Recog-
nizing its incomplete character, we bring in what we have left
out and call it the ' ideal self.' Then by way of dealing with
the fact that we have not two selves here at all, but simply a
less and a more adequate insight into the same self, we
insert the idea of one of these selves realizing the other. We
have an insight which first takes the activity abstractly, and,
by cutting off some of its intrinsic relations, arrests it and
makes of it a merely realized, or past self ; when we perceive
these intrinsic relations, instead of using them to correct our
previous idea, thus grasping the one continuous activity, we
set them off by themselves as ideal — as something to be
realized. Such is the natural history of the fixed distinction
between the realized and the ideal self. It has same source as
the process which gives rise to the notion of capacities as
possibilities in general.

The more one is convinced that the pressing need of the day,
in order to make headway against hedonistic ethics on one side
and theological ethics on the other, is an ethics rooted and
grounded in the self, the greater is the demand that the self
be conceived as a working, practical self, carrying within the
rhythm of its own process both ' realized ' and ' ideal ' self.
The current ethics of the self (falsely named Neo-Hegelian,
being in truth Neo-Fichtean) are too apt to stop with a meta-
physical definition, which seems to solve problems in general,
but at the expense of the practical problems which alone really

is moral only when done from consciousness of duty, we should say that it is
immoral (because partial) as long as done merely from a sense of duty, and
becomes truly moral when done for its own concrete sake.

664 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.

demand or admit solution. The great need of ethical theory
to-day is a conception of the ideal as a working ideal — a con-
ception which shall have the same value and which shall play
the same part in ethics that the working hypothesis performs
for the natural sciences. The fixed ideal is as distinctly the
bane of ethical science to-day as the fixed universe of medi-
aevalism was the bane of the natural science of the Renascence.
As natural science found its outlet by admitting no idea, no
theory, as fixed by itself, demanding of every idea that it
become fruitful in experiment, so must ethical science purge
itself of all conceptions, of all ideals, save those which are
developed within and for the sake of practice.

John Dewey.
University of Michigan.